Chapter 2: last run
At dock four, the soldiers were nervous, they walked around each other unable to stand still.
All the entrances to the dock where closed and locked, all expect one.
The one marked with the number 301, here the soldiers where getting ready to take a block formation.
Groups of soldiers were gathered around their superior officer there were keeping an eye on the radar.
"This is suicide!" one of them said looking at the others, some nodded, others where too concentrated on looking at the radar screen with the officer. Some were biting their nails, some grinding their teeth but all of them were focused on the radar screen.
The screen showed three circles, one inside the other. And from the centre a ring were pulsed out over the screen until it disappeared in the sides and came again from the centre.
"I'll say it again, this is suicide!" the soldier repeated.
"Well what would you rather prefer?" one of the other soldiers said
"Well frankly, I would prefer to be home on Veldin."
"Well wouldn't we all, but we are here and we have a job to do, so zip it."
He closed his hand to illustrate a mouth closing, and then he returned his attention to the radar the suddenly with out warning began to beep, as a spot showed it self on the screen.
The commando jumped up from his sitting position, and yelled; "target approaching all men on their posts primary order: take down the target, fight to the last."
All the soldiers moved around and got all their weapons ready, a large group formed at the entrance taking a defensive position.
At the ended of the corridor Edward round the corner a stopped in his tracks, when he saw the soldier gathering at the corridor entrance.
"Well, well it looks like I was right…" he mumbled to himself.
"…it is a trap, but a very pure one at that."
Edward took a steep forward and instantly a thick steel door slammed down behind him, cutting of any chance of escape that way. But Edward didn't plane to go back, now he would only move forward and kill everyone who got in his way.
On the bridge the captain monitored the situation on the main screen, and when the steel door went down the captain gave his order; "activate, the last run." He looked at Edward on the screen.
"I don't hope you have a painful death Edward, I just hope you die!"
A few meters from where Edward was standing the walls opened and, and from the openings came two massive Gatlingguns, the as soon they where out began to fire.
But Edward reacted fast, he charge with out hesitation toward the two machines using his blades to deflect the bullets. When he pasted the two guns he holds his blades out to the sides, and slides them from the barrel and down, deviating them both in two, as he had don this they exploded, and a new trap formed op ahead.
Moving laser beams creating a web of red beams that could cut him in a thousand pieces, but Edward continued. He jump head first toward the beams, spinning in the air. And by a miracle he flew through a gap in the laser web, and landed firmly on his feet.
Edward looked down the corridor, seeing that the where only a few meter to the massacre the awaited him.
He ran forward, but suddenly a steel door came down before him. "NO!" he yelled jolting toward the entrance, but too late. The door prevented him from getting in to the hanger, he began to cut and chop in the steel. But to no use, then another door closed down behind him.
He stood and looked at his surrounding, the where no were to go. Then he suddenly he began to notice a smell, he looked around and saw that a gas was streaming out from holes in the ceiling and walls.
In no time the little space between the doors where filled with the gas, making it hard to breathe and Edward where beginning to fell dizzy.
At the bridge the captain was watching intensively as Edward breath in the gas, seeing him losing his strength. When Edward collapses on the floor, he took a relieving sigh as he sad back in his chair. He turned to the first officer "tell the men that it's over, and now we can go home now."
The first officer nodded, "yes sir, but what with the body?"
"Put it in the freezer, we'll let it over to the militarily when we get home it's theirs trash anyway, and we have retained it for twenty years, but now its over."
The door opened slowly, the gas had been ejected out through the vents. But just for sake the two soldiers there went into move Edward body, took each an o2 mask over their mouth.
They bowed down on each side of the body, and took around the upper arms. As they lifted Edward his lower arms dangled still holding the blades, they began to drag the body out into the hanger.
Suddenly the soldiers felled some resistance, they looked wondering at the body, there suddenly stood up, and with a slash from his blades he cut up their aorta. A stream of blood squirt upon the wall, and some even hit Edward on the cheek. It slid down to the corner of his mouth where he licked it away, "surprise!" he said as he raise his arms ready to attack.
The soldier that had dissolved their defensive position wasn't expecting Edward coming back to life. So the first kills were easy.
He charge forward with his blades raised and pierce the chests of four soldiers the stood in the front line. He throws them over his head, and began to mow the other soldiers down.
The guns fired, the blades sang, and the soldiers fell.
Edward chopped them down one by one, his blades cut through their armour like a knife through warm butter.
He got through the wall of soldiers and ran towards a fighter ship. He jumped up on the nose of the ship and pressed the button that opened the cockpit, he climbed down into it just in time, because just as he bowed down gun a shot pieced the air where his head had been a spilt second ago.
He dropped down into the shuttle, and it closed after him.
The soldiers stop shooting their bullets couldn't penetrate the fighter's amour, one of the soldiers when'd over to the commanding officer. "Sir we can't get to him, the ship is to well amour, what should we do?"
The officer stood for a moment chewing the inside of his chic, and then he came up with an idea.
"Get the engineers, we'll weld that thing shut and send it out into space, where we'll blow it to smithereens with the turrets." He looked at the soldier; "well, what are you waiting for, go get the engineers?!"
The soldier saluted and with a brief; "yes sir," he was off.
The officer led his wrist up to the height of his eyes, he pushed a little button on the side of the wristwatch, and a little holographic screen appeared.
The screen showed the bridge with the captain in his highchair, and the first officer at his right.
"Greetings captain" the commanding officer said, saluting his superior officers.
"Status, mayor?" the captain asked, with a nervous look in his old eyes.
The mayor smiled.
"Everything under control sir, we have cornered Edward Cutter in a fighter ship. We are planning to weld it shut, and send out into space and let the Retainers cannons deal with it."
"Good, then we'll finally be able to end this twenty year long chapter." The captain said closing his eyes.
The first officer weren't convinced.
"Are you sure he can't start the ship and escape that way?"
"Positive sir" the mayor said with a smiled. "He can't start the ship, without the unlocking code to the control panel."
Onboard the fighter ship Edward was having some problems, as the mayor had said to his superiors he couldn't start the ship with out the code to unlock its systems.
But he knew that the always where a way around this systems, and he just had to find it.
Edward was fiddling with a bunch of wires and cords, when he heard a kind of blowing noise. So he looked op through the windows of the hatch of the ship, and saw to soldiers with blow torches welding the hatch shut.
"Hmm… it appears that they want to trap me, inside this vessel." He said to himself; "well I don't plan to stay here any longer, so I better get busy!"
A last he managed to short – circuit the lock – system, and the ship started.
The soldiers on the ship welding stopped their work, as they felled the ships motor began to hum. They jumped down and ran over to the mayor; "Sir, sir he has started the ship!"
The mayor watched in disbelief as the fighter raised it self from the flower, turning around so the nose of the ship pointed towards the big hanger doors.
The fighter fired a series of torpedoes, blowing a hole in the doors.
Sucking everything and everyone there wasn't nailed to the flower out into space, and the fighter with Edward Cutter onboard it blasted out of the hanger.
He steered the fighter up above the "Retainer".
The captain and first officer watched from the bridged.
"He is going to attract!" the captain said with a scared and despaired look on his face.
"Don't worry sir he can't get through the shield." As the first officer said it, Edward lowered down to flying just above the shield surface. Where he fire a missile, the when'd through the shield and blasted toward the bridged.
The first officer just managed to hear the captain say "on short distends, the shield can't stop a missile if its drop right above it." And with that the bridge exploded.
Edward stirred away from the beaten starship, and turned the nose of the fighter out into space pointing at a little twinkling spot, out in the distends.
"Veldin" he said "I'm coming home", and with that he activated the warp drive.